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Saturday, July 25, 2015

EOR: Making Greens Scream

Just when Greens thought they might have the fossil fuel industry on the retreat, an old technology is born again, combines with technology, and produces more oil than ever:

Carbon dioxide (CO2) enhanced oil recovery (EOR) has been successfully used in the US for around 40 years. The injection of CO2 into ageing oil fields to sweep residual oil has helped extend the production life of some fields by more than 25 years. The key enabler of this success has been the availability of a large volume of low-cost naturally occurring CO2, which has been tapped in the US to provide a regular supply to EOR projects.

However, the US remains the only nation to have discovered naturally occurring CO2 sources, apart from natural gas collections with a high CO2 content. As maturing oil production markets provide more opportunity for CO2 use in EOR, demand for CO2 has risen while supply volumes have not seen significant additions over the market's 35+ year history.

There has therefore been a growing interest in capturing some of the approximately 32 billion tonnes of CO2 released into the atmosphere globally from anthropogenic sources such as power plants, and using this to boost production of oil from waning production areas. This creates opportunities in many more countries outside the US where CO2 EOR markets have the potential to grow. The intensifying link with carbon capture technology will mean that areas advanced in this technology with significant maturing oil areas will prosper in the CO2 EOR market.